The Olympic opening ceremony, which included 10,000 dancing nurses, mime artists and the performance of every Shakespeare play, has been shortened in length. Lord Coe explained; ‘The problem was that several performers were also required for the closing ceremony and there was no way they could be in both. There was also a very slight chance that some of the audience might get a little bored towards the end of the 21 day performance.’

As things had stood there would have been no time for the main business of the Olympics themselves, which is of course the world’s pre-eminent security festival.